


hypnagogia

by tentaclemonster



Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [51]
Category: Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale)
Genre: 100 Fandoms Challenge, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Deception, F/M, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Period-Typical Sexism, Psychological Horror Masquerading As Romance, Semi-Graphic Depictions of Childbirth, Somnophilia, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22831444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: A year ago, Cecile woke up screaming.
Relationships: Prince/Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tales)
Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [51]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1257083
Kudos: 264
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	hypnagogia

**Author's Note:**

> 051/100 for the 100 Fandoms Challenge. Written for prompt #64 – practice.

The hardest part about it wasn’t trying to stay completely still, but trying to stay completely quiet. 

That was the trick of it, the thing Cecile most struggled with. Staying still was the easy part. It was more about what she didn’t do than what she did. 

She just had to relax herself, go limp and keep her eyes shut like she used to as a little girl when she wanted her maids to think she was still asleep in the mornings so she wouldn’t be made to get up and get dressed for lessons. The important thing to remember was not to go tense, not to flinch when Prince Gustav touched her, to just let him put her how he liked as though she were a doll for him to play with and not react in any way as he went about his business. 

Simple enough, really.

It was keeping silent, keeping her breathing nice and even as though she were actually asleep, that was the hard part, which was no surprise as Cecile had always struggled with that as a child, too. It was always the thing that gave her away to her maids. 

“You are not asleep, princess,” they would cluck at her in the mornings as they gently pulled the covers off her head. “You breathe too quickly for a sleeping girl, I can hear you through the sheets! Now, up up up! Time to break your fast and then off to learn your letters. You know the king won’t like it if his only daughter never learns how to read.”

It was just as hard keeping her breathing quiet with Gustav now as it was way back when. Harder, even, with what it was he was doing to her while she was pretending to be asleep. 

Cecile couldn’t help how her breath quickened when the prince was on top of her, pushing her legs open with his soft hands and putting his manhood inside of her before he started moving it in and out of her body. It was a strange feeling that overcame her in their bed with Gustav’s body on hers, his skin on her skin, like some sort of pressure was building up inside of her body just waiting to explode and tear her apart at the seams. 

Cecile’s breath wanted to come in quick pants on those occasions when Gustav was on her and inside of her and it felt as though the walls of the bedroom were getting closer to her, slowly creeping forward like living things with feet. She felt as if she were on the verge of having a panic almost because she couldn’t open her eyes and make sure the walls weren’t moving, because sleeping people didn’t open their eyes and it was very important that she seem to be asleep until Gustav was done. 

When Gustav might touch her chest or kiss her neck, when one of his thrusts made something spark between her legs and it had her heart skipping like a stone on the water, and her breathing wanted to speed up like she’d just broke off into a run, it was imperative that Cecile not let the pressure building up in her overflow, that she not give any sign of being awake, but it was such a hard thing to do.

It took everything in her to not allow that feeling to take over her, to stay calm and relaxed and to keep her eyes shut and her breathing slow like she was sleeping and having the most peaceful of dreams while she did. It was hard not to gasp, not to inhale too sharply or to make any sounds, to not let her breathing shutter or skip in its even inhale-one-two-exhale pace the way her heart skipped in her chest.

It was a skill that took some practice to get good at, but Cecile thought that a year on, she had become quite proficient indeed. Gustav sometimes even told her that he couldn’t tell she wasn’t sleeping at all anymore and she felt a little proud at that, though Cecile knew pride was a vice, especially in women, but still she thought she might be allowed to take a little pride in just this one thing and it would be okay. 

Women were surely allowed to be pleased when their husbands complimented them, she thought. Certainly there was no harm in that.

*

A year ago, Cecile woke up screaming.

Were she not in so much horrible pain, Cecile might’ve wondered how she was waking up at all when she had no recollection of ever getting into bed and going to sleep in the first place, when her last memory was of pricking her hand on that wheel she’d found an old woman using in an old tower of the castle and suddenly there was nothing but darkness surrounding her like a veil being placed upon her head, obscuring her vision.

As it was, wondering was out of the question. 

Cecile was not capable right then of wondering anything or recalling that last memory. She would not have been able to recall her own name if anyone had asked in that moment.

The pain took precedence over everything. There seemed like there was nothing  _ but _ the pain, an awful pain coming from the very center of her as though she were being ripped open and burned all at once, a pain that reached its clawing hooks up her spine and raked them down her legs, making the hurt extend up the length of her body and seep into the very marrow of her bones.

When the slightest bit of ability to  _ think _ came back to Cecile, to notice something other than the pain, she realized her surroundings like they were pictures in a book whose pages were being flipped through so fast that it was impossible to fully understand what she was seeing without feeling horribly dizzy. 

She was in a small room that looked familiar to her, but that she couldn’t currently place. She noticed that her bottom half was soaking wet and that she lay in some odd container that was made of glass, that it was as long as her body, but not wide enough for her to reach out and stretch her arms at all without putting them over the thing’s sides. She then looked down and noticed with equal parts terror and disgust that her stomach was extended, rounded out like a hard melon, and she hadn’t a clue how it had gotten that way so fast when it was so flat just earlier, whenever earlier was.

It was only once she managed to tear her eyes away from her large belly, when she managed to fight down the nausea she felt at the sight of it, that she noticed the boy.

A boy who, later, Cecile would learn was Prince Gustav along with everything else, but in that moment of pain, pain, so much  _ pain _ , she knew nothing but that he was a slight reed of a boy of an age with her if not younger and he was holding her hand very tightly and that he looked completely and utterly afraid.

He was saying, “Oh, oh no, oh no no no” – repeating it over and over, and Cecile could not even ask what was wrong or what was  _ happening _ because the pain stabbed at her again, making her gasp and her body spasm, and she started screaming again, writhing in agony in that glass thing.

“You have to push!” the boy told her in a shaky, panicked voice. “That – that is what women do, when – when – oh, oh  _ God _ – oh –“

And Cecile had no idea what he was talking about, but somehow her body did and she began to push as he said she should even though she hadn’t a clue why she was pushing or to what end.

Pushing felt right, though. It felt like the right thing to do even when everything else felt wrong, felt bad, felt wrong and bad and wrong wrong  _ wrong _ .

Cecile pushed and she panted like a dog gone without water as she did, squeezing the boy’s hand with a strength that she hadn’t known she possessed all the while but not aware enough to worry about whether she might be hurting him when she was so hurting herself. 

She pushed as some pressure built up inside of her where the pain was as the pain itself only got worse, possessing a strength of its own that made Cecile’s look like the strength of but a mere little mouse struggling vainly to get out of a trap that had already snapped down on its tail. 

She pushed until she realized, sobbing from the pain and the knowledge both, that the reason she was pushing was because something was inside of her and she had to get it  _ out _ . 

Cecile pushed and she pushed and she pushed, straining herself and thinking with fevered terror that it would never end and that she would surely die soon and be glad for it if only to get away from the pain she was in, until finally she felt the thing in her start to pass from her body, stretching the center of her in a way that felt impossibly unnatural and horrific in its unnaturalness. 

And then, finally, with one last great effort, the thing was out of her and Cecile collapsed back against the glass beneath her, sobbing in relief, her ears deaf to the high, shrill crying voice that had joined her own.

“Oh God, oh –“ the boy was still saying, something breathless in his tone. “Oh thank God, you’re still –“

He broke off from whatever he was about to say, crying. 

Cecile was still barely able to pay attention to his words or to process them. The pain had lessened, had gone from a series of sharp stabs to a single unending ache, but it was by no means gone. She still suffered, was still confused, and her suffering only made her confusion all the worse.

It was only when the boy finally stopped crying and said, “I – I’m going to go get help. I promise, I’ll – I’ll bring people back to help you, to – to help you both. I’m so sorry, I’m so –“ that Cecile’s mind took notice of him, of the words “I’m going to go” more than any of the rest. 

The thought of this boy – whoever he was, whatever he was doing here, whatever  _ she _ was doing here – this boy who was the  _ only _ one around leaving her here alone set off an alarm in Cecile and struck her with a jolt of panic as strong as a lightning bolt.

“No, no, don’t,” she begged through her sobs, before she even really made the conscious decision to speak. “Don’t--” 

“I’ll be back,” the boy promised, and then his hand was releasing hers. Cecile only realized it a second too late. Her empty hand closed down, trying to hold on to something that was no longer there, and could do nothing but make a weak fist, grasping at nothing but air. “I’ll run as fast as I can. It won’t be long.”

“No –“ Cecile tried again, but the boy was already turning away and running, already gone.

Cecile was left crying and – as far as she realized – all alone. Her body was too weak to move and so she could do nothing but lay back in her own sweat and whatever else was soiling her and pray that the boy would return, or that at least someone else would find her and get her to a physician so that her life might be saved.

The other cries that Cecile hadn’t heard before quieted down to the smallest of mewls and whimpers. By the time Cecile was finally able to hear them, she mistook them for the sounds of some animal and prayed that they would not take her for prey and bother her while she was so weak.

Cecile tried to stay awake for she feared that if she closed her eyes she wouldn’t be able to open them again, but despite her effort she eventually lapsed into a fevered sleep. She was still sleeping when the boy returned some time later with a group of knights, all of them quite harried at having been rushed to some far off part of the castle at the call of their prince who had run to get them in a panic.

Cecile didn’t see these men and didn’t feel it when one of them lifted her oh so carefully into his arms. She didn’t see any of the familiar scenery pass her by as she was rushed to another area of the castle or the room she was put in or the face of the midwife who came and examined her and announced that she’d live.

She also didn’t see the other occupant of the glass coffin she was taken from, the small whimpering baby who was covered in blood and gore. She didn’t see how the boy lifted the baby from the coffin and held the squirming thing with both hands, extending it a foot away from himself as though he was holding a stray cat rather than a child. She didn’t see how a knight showed the boy the proper way to hold the infant or how he gave the boy his cloak to wrap the child in, telling the boy in an awkward sort of tone that it wouldn’t do for such a young lad to catch a chill. 

Cecile didn’t see much of anything. 

Cecile, as she had done for quite some time already, slept. 

And then, days later and for the second occasion in so short a time, Cecile woke up again.

*

Cecile awakened with an aching body and a fuzzy head, confused at where she was, and with no one around save for a strange woman a bit older than her sitting at her bedside with some sewing on her lap. 

That woman startled at seeing her awake and when Cecile weakly asked where she was, promptly informed her that she was at King Oswald’s castle and that Cecile needn’t worry because Prince Gustav had seen that she and the baby had both been tended to.

When Cecile asked, “What baby?” – the first question that came to mind, quickly followed by “Gustav who?” and “Who is King Oswald?” which she hadn’t the strength to voice after the first question seemed to sap most of her energy from her – the woman blinked as though Cecile had asked, “What is the color of the sky?” instead before her face cleared and she gave Cecile a small, patient smile like how one might smile to a child who had asked a silly question. 

The woman gently told Cecile that there was much for her to be told and that she must feel so confused – that birth could do that to a girl, even in normal circumstances, and then there was all the rest – and that it would all be clear soon. The woman then told Cecile that she would bring the midwife back to check on her to see how she was doing and that everything would be explained to her very soon.

The woman left without another word after that and brought back another woman not long later, a much older woman with a brusque way of speaking who had Cecile sit up and lift the white shift she was wearing over her stomach and spread her legs without ever offering Cecile her name or extending any other greeting. 

It was an embarrassing suggestion Cecile didn’t much want to follow until the older woman said it was necessary, that she was a midwife and it was her job, and Cecile reluctantly agreed. Still, it pained her to move, and it pained her more when the midwife poked at her and prodded at her in her most intimate places, the woman heedless of how Cecile flinched and hissed and her whole face burned with humiliation. 

She asked Cecile if she was in pain and when Cecile said she was, the midwife asked her to describe it. 

“All’s well then,” the midwife said when Cecile was done telling her of how she ached. The woman nodded at her description as though satisfied by it, and righted Cecile’s shift, gently putting the covers back over her. “You’ll be aching for awhile yet, but it seems to be in all the usual ways. Nothing to suggest you’re bleeding inside or that the birth injured you any more than it should’ve done. I don’t imagine you’ll be abed longer than a week or so before you’ll feel like walking about.”

Cecile felt something of a relief at being told her health was well, but she couldn’t find much comfort in it as her confusion dominated it totally.

“But I don’t understand,” she said plaintively to the midwife, her voice dry and scratchy. The midwife got Cecile a cup of water without asking and helped Cecile to drink it. Only after half the glass was gone and Cecile’s throat didn’t feel nearly so parched did the questions come spilling out of her. “What has happened to me? I only remember that I woke up and – and I was in so much  _ pain _ . I don’t know what caused it or how I got here or – or anything, really. You’re talking about a birth and she said there’s a baby and I don’t know what either of you are saying. What birth? What baby?  _ Whose _ baby? I beg of you, won’t you please tell me what’s going on?”

The midwife exchanged a look with the other woman at her words and the latter, apparently taking that look as a dismissal, quickly took her leave of the room after offering Cecile another small smile and a simple curtsy.

The midwife took a deep breath after she left and then asked Cecile, “What do you remember about before you woke up? What’s the last thing that happened?”

Cecile had to think about it before she answered, but she found the memory easily. In Cecile’s mind, it had only happened yesterday or perhaps a day before that. 

“My parents had left court for the day and I stayed home,” she recalled. “I was supposed to be attending my lessons, but I was very bored and I begged my tutor to allow me to finish early. He agreed and so I spent the day exploring the castle. There are so many rooms and so much I’d never seen before, you see, and I found myself in an old tower and I climbed the stairs and – and there was this old woman in a room at the top. She was sitting and using some odd instrument and I asked her what she was doing and she said she was spinning. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but the thing was very strange, like a wheel of sorts, but there was a part that was bobbing up and down on it that drew my eye. I don’t know why I did it, I think I was just curious, but I reached out to touch it and – and I pricked my finger on it. I remember it hurt, just a little, but it was more of a surprise than anything. It wasn’t any worse than any other time I’d stuck myself sewing, but – but when I looked at the blood on my finger, I felt... _ faint _ . I don’t know why, I’ve never felt faint looking at blood before, but this time I did and then...then...”

Cecile frowned as she realized that nothing came after  _ then _ .

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Everything went dark after that and the next thing, I was waking up with that horrible pain. I felt like I was being torn in two and I was in this glass...oh, it was like a  _ coffin _ ! And there was a boy there –“

“Prince Gustav,” the midwife offered.

Cecile looked at her in surprise. 

“The other lady mentioned that a Prince Gustav had gotten me help,” Cecile said, uncertain, “but I’ve never heard of any Prince Gustav or a King Oswald. My father is the king of Briarland and there are no other kingdoms for many miles. Are we very far from Briarland here?”

“No, this  _ is _ Briarland,” the midwife answered, only further increasing Cecile’s confusion.

“I don’t understand,” she said again. A frisson of anxiety was coiling around Cecile’s throat, tightening as though it was a snake intent on strangling her. “If we’re in Briarland, then where are my parents? Where are  _ we _ ? Nothing in this room is familiar to me and – oh, please, I am very confused. You must tell me everything. Please don’t make me continue to beg.”

“You must understand,” the midwife explained, “I don’t wish to keep you in the dark and neither does King Oswald or anyone else. It is only that...what has happened to you is very complicated and it may be distressing and it is no good to distress a woman after what you’ve been through. Your health is well now, but a woman’s health is always precarious, especially considering....well, are you  _ sure _ you wouldn’t rather wait until you’re a bit more healed?”

“No,” Cecile answered firmly, shaking her head. “No, I need to know, please. I know I must – I must look a  _ fright _ and must seem addled right now, but it is only my confusion and the pain I still have that make me so. I promise that I can handle whatever it is that you need to tell me. You needn’t worry that it will harm me, but the opposite. My disposition will only worsen if I’m not given the truth, for I will worry myself into ill health if I never learn what is going on or why I feel the way I do.”

The midwife still looked reluctant, but as Cecile continued to stare at her imploringly, finally she sighed and nodded. “Very well. I will tell you all, but you must promise to remain calm for the sake of your health. Becoming upset will not do it any favors.”

“Yes,” Cecile quickly agreed. “Yes, of course.”

“Alright,” the midwife said. She paused for a moment, thinking of how to start. Finally, she asked, “Did your parents ever tell you about the Wise Women who came to the celebration of your birth?”

“Well, yes. There were twelve of them. My father told me that they came and each bestowed on me a great gift. The first blessed me with virtue, the second with beauty, the third with riches, and – oh, I forget the rest. I was only a child when my father told me the story.”

“You are right in a way, dear girl. There _ were _ twelve Wise Women invited to the celebration and they did each give you a blessing, but there were thirteen Wise Women in the kingdom and one was not invited to the celebration at all. The thirteenth Wise Woman felt slighted by this and came to the celebration anyway, and when she arrived she laid not a blessing but a deadly curse upon your person.”

Cecile inhaled sharply.

“A curse?” she repeated, one of her hands rising to touch her throat as though the touch might calm the sudden uptick in her pulse there.

The midwife nodded, her expression grave. “She declared that on your fifteenth birthday you would prick your finger on a spindle and fall down dead.”

“My father didn’t tell me anything like that,” Cecile replied. Her heartbeat had jumped even more in her chest at the words ‘fall down dead’. She was shocked and horrified by them, and hurt that no one had ever told her, and yet, “But...but no, wait, I had my fifteenth birthday and I did prick my finger on – I suppose that thing the old woman had was a spindle – and I did fall down, but I didn’t die. I am not dead now. The curse didn’t work, did it?”

“When the thirteenth Wise Woman arrived and cursed you, she left quickly after – but this all happened before the twelfth Wise Woman had given you her blessing,” the midwife explained. “The twelfth Wise Woman could not undo the thirteenth’s curse, but she could change it, and so her blessing was that you would not fall down dead, but simply fall into a deep sleep that would last until you were revived by...true love’s kiss.”

Cecile made a strangled noise at that. Her hand moved from her throat to touch her fingers to her lips and she could feel her face burning. “True love’s---”

She could not even finish it. 

She stared at the midwife, wide-eyed, half hoping the woman would tell her it was all a horrible joke, but the midwife’s expression remained grave and Cecile felt her hope plummet in her chest.

And then Cecile realized – 

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked in a fraught whisper.

“For one hundred years,” the midwife answered, and Cecile made another noise, a sharp, sudden gasp. The midwife reached out to pat Cecile’s hand, but Cecile hardly felt it, her shock so strong. “You must understand, your father invited lords and princes and even laymen from all over to try to kiss you awake. He even began inviting ladies to kiss you, too, eventually. He very much wanted you to be revived, but no matter how many tried to wake you, you still slept on. He took heart that you didn’t age or waste away, but he always hoped that someday you would awaken. He made a proclamation that whoever managed to wake you would be granted your hand in marriage, and that certainly had people lining up to try, but – well, one hundred years is a very long time. No one forgot about you, but the number of people arriving to try lessened and eventually stopped entirely. People began to believe the curse was unbreakable and then, after awhile, they began to believe that the whole story was little more than a fable, not something that happened to a real girl.”

“But I  _ did _ wake up!” Cecile insisted. The midwife’s tale spun around her head like a whirlwind, but it was this point that Cecile’s thoughts grabbed onto. “Someone must have –“

Cecile stopped mid-sentence, her mind sparking on a thought.

“Prince Gustav?” she asked, recalling the boy she woke up to. “Was he the one?”

A troubled look crossed the midwife’s face, but it was gone so quickly that Cecile thought she imagined it.

“Yes,” said the midwife, her voice entirely without inflection, “Prince Gustav is the one. As your father had no heir with you sleeping and his queen never had another child, he eventually named heir to the throne his cousin and most trusted adviser, Lord Sickhert. King Oswald and Prince Gustav are Sickhert’s descendants, and the prince has quite the love for exploring the castle as you apparently did. He discovered the room you were kept in and...”

The midwife trailed off.

“Kissed me?” Cecile finished for her.

The midwife frowned, but nodded. “Yes, he kissed you.” 

Cecile felt her face heat again at the thought of being kissed. She didn’t recall waking to any such thing. No, all she recalled was that horrible pain, which didn’t make any sense, did it?

“I still don’t understand,” Cecile confessed. “Why was I in so much pain when I woke up? Why do I still hurt now? I’ve never been kissed before, not – not back before all this, at least, but I know it isn’t supposed to hurt so badly as that.”

The midwife’s frown deepened. She was quiet for a long moment before she spoke, but when she finally did, she said, “Magic is...quite a strange thing. No one can predict how it will turn out. When Prince Gustav... _ kissed _ you, the magic of breaking the curse had a surprising effect. It caused you to swell with child and give birth….rather quickly.”

Cecile’s mouth went dry. Again, she looked at the midwife hoping the woman was joking, but again, there was no hint of mirth on the old woman’s face.

“I know it is a shock,” the midwife said. “All of it is...a great shock, waking up to find yourself a wife and a mother –“

“A wife?” Cecile interrupted, her mind snagging on that word. 

“Your father proclaimed that whoever woke you would have your hand and Prince Gustav did that. Besides,” the midwife’s voice gentled and she squeezed Cecile’s hand with a firm grasp, “it would not be good for you if you were to be an unwed mother with no one to provide for you just as it would not be good for King Oswald to have the heir to the old king, your father, not tied to his own family. Prince Gustav...he is not a bad young man. He really isn’t. He was always shy and quite gentle before....He will make an easy husband to have, princess, and since you have already given him a child, there is no pressure on you to provide another any time soon. I would not recommend you to make a fuss over this or to try to deny that you are married to him, as King Oswald has already declared you are and as your own father wanted it this way. It will be much easier for you if you just...go along, yes?”

The midwife’s gaze was imploring as she stared at Cecile and her grip on Cecile’s hand was very strong.

Cecile felt as though she could hardly breathe in the face of it, with the midwife’s words ringing in her ears. 

A wife, the midwife told her she was. A mother.

Cecile was only fifteen – plus a hundred, if she’d truly been sleeping for so long, but she was still just a girl in her mind. She only had fifteen years of memories and experiences. She’d always known she would have to marry someday, and someday soon at that, but her father had always promised that the choice would be Cecile’s. That he would not make Cecile marry some strange man she didn’t know or like.

But now she was married to a boy she didn’t know after all. A boy who Cecile knew nothing about but that he had kissed her and that he had been frightened when she had woken up and all that happened when she did and that he had helped her as much as he could and then run off to get her more help. 

It was less than Cecile would like to know about who she was married to, but it was...something. It meant he was not entirely bad if he had gotten help for her and help for...for the  _ child _ .

“Where’s the baby?” Cecile asked the midwife suddenly. She wiped the tears she just realized she was crying off of her face with the back of her hands. “The other woman said the baby was well, that it had been tended to. Where is it?”

“The baby is down the hall in the nursery. There is a nurse tending to him. He’s in perfect health.” The midwife looked hesitant then, but offered, “I can go and bring him here to you, if you’d like?”

“No,” Cecile answered before she had even thought to say it. She then flushed and said, “No, not right now, please. Later. I feel –“

Cecile felt a sense of horror, of out of body nervousness at the thought of seeing a child that had apparently come out of her, of the thing that had caused her so much pain. She felt afraid, her heartbeat quickening, at the thought of actually seeing the baby or of holding it in her arms. She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not now.

“I feel,” she continued slowly, taking a deep breath to steady herself, “it will be better to wait until I’m healed. Until I can get it all...sorted out in my head, if that’s alright.”

“It is,” the midwife said. She gave Cecile a small smile that Cecile thought was likely meant to be reassuring, but it faltered too quickly to be of much comfort. “All at your own pace. Everyone knows you’ve been through an ordeal and that it will take time for you to recover. Is there anything else you need right now, then?”

Cecile thought about it.

“If it’s possible,” she broached, “might I meet Prince Gustav? If he’s available, that is. I wouldn’t want to pry him from anything important.” 

That troubled look passed over the midwife’s face again, but once more it was gone so quickly that Cecile could not make heads or tails of it. 

“I should think Prince Gustav would consider his new wife very important. He usually isn’t very busy this time of day. Spends most of his time in the library, he does. I’ll just...go get him and tell him you’re awake and wanting to see him.”

“Thank you,” Cecile said, and the midwife nodded at her and quit the room, leaving Cecile there to wait.

*

Cecile’s second impression of Prince Gustav was a good deal less fleeting than the first.

The prince looked about the same age as Cecile, just as she first thought he did, but there was a boyishness about his face and the way he moved that made Cecile wonder if he might not be younger instead. He was tall, but thin as a rake, and he had a mop of short, tawny colored hair on his head. He didn’t look nearly as frightened as he did before, the first and only other time Cecile had saw him, but he did look horribly nervous still. 

He entered the room as tentative as a mouse creeping towards a piece of cheese and every step he took towards Cecile was a wavering one. He looked as though any sudden noise might startle him into fleeing, but as Cecile was saying and doing nothing but sitting up in bed and quietly watching him approach her, rather nervous herself, he managed to make it all the way to the bed where he hesitated for a moment before taking the seat the woman Cecile had woken up to had been sewing in before and pulling it up to the bedside where he sat down himself.

So close now, Cecile had as best a look at Gustav’s face as she ever had. 

He had delicate features, this prince, high cheekbones and a nose and mouth that would have looked more suited on a girl than a boy. His eyes were light brown in color and a little too close together, and his chin teetered on the line of being what might be described as weak.

He wasn’t handsome, but neither was he ugly. He wasn’t the sort of boy Cecile had imagined when she thought of what she might like her husband to look like one day, but she thought that if she had met him at a ball and he asked her for a dance, she would accept it with a polite smile, if not with any excitement – though, truly, Cecile couldn’t imagine Gustav asking any girl for a dance. 

He seemed like an eternal wallflower, timid and meek. Cecile didn’t think he would have been able to muster up the bravery to try to ask her to borrow a quill, much less for a dance, in the first place. How he had managed to gather the courage to kiss her, Cecile couldn’t understand. She only blushed at the knowledge that he had.

It took Gustav a minute or so to get up the nerve to speak. He held his hands in his lap, wringing them together, but he didn’t seem conscious that he was doing it.

Finally, he spoke, but all he said was a quiet, “Hello.”

“Hello,” Cecile said softly back. When Gustav said nothing else –  _ did _ nothing else but stare at Cecile like she might jump up and eat him at any moment – Cecile licked her dry lips and went on, “I’m not sure if you know, but...my name is Cecile.”

Gustav blinked at her, as though surprised by her words. Even the wringing hands in his lap stilled, closing into loose fists. 

“I did know,” he said, a little stupefied-like, then his face went a shade of bright red and he continued, “I - I mean, I  _ do _ know, actually. I’ve read all the books I can about Briarland’s history and my family’s history and you, the Princess Cecile, are mentioned in all of them.”

Cecile was the one looking at Gustav in surprise now. “I am?”

“Oh, yes.” Gustav nodded, his head bobbing up and down in a rapid manner. His eyes brightened and he even leaned forward a little, his voice losing its shyness as he explained, “It’s only because of what happened to you that my ancestor, King Sickhert, ever became a king, and so all the books about him and his children start with your story – and, of course, everyone knows the story about Sleeping Beauty anyway even if they don’t know a thing about history.”

“I’m sorry – Sleeping Beauty?”

“Well, it’s – it’s what everyone calls you,” Gustav said, flushing. “Because you’re, you’re very beautiful and you slept for such a long time.”

Cecile stared at him, wordless.

Gustav’s flush darkened under her scrutiny. Somewhat defensively, he mumbled, “I didn’t choose the name, myself. It was already being used long before I was born.”

“It’s not that I blame you!” Cecile rushed to say. “It’s just…difficult to imagine that books have been written about me, is all. Everything about all of this is very difficult to imagine.”

“Oh,” Gustav said. His hands started wringing again. “Yes, I – I can see how that might be. You were asleep for a very long time and – and now you’re awake and everything is different. Everyone around you is different. It must be very hard to – to adjust to it all.”

“I’ve only been awake for a little while,” Cecile replied, feeling self-conscious. “I don’t know if I’ve quite adjusted to anything yet.”

“Well..there’s time for all that,” said Gustav, looking distinctly uncomfortable as he said it. He didn’t seem to know what the right thing to say was, but he continued, “And you’re healthy, at least. That’s what the midwife said. I – I was very worried before that – that I wouldn’t get you help in time. There was...a good deal of blood, but the midwife told me that’s not – not very uncommon, apparently.”

Cecile swallowed hard, feeling rather faint at remembering what she now knew was her labor experience. The thought of herself in that coffin, in so much pain, bleeding out while a child came out of her...it made Cecile nauseous. It made it hard to breathe.

She didn’t want to dwell on it, or to talk about it, and so she changed the subject a little instead.

“I should thank you,” she told him. “I’m sorry, I should have done that first thing. You broke the curse on me when no one else could.”

Gustav held Cecile’s gaze for a long moment before his eyes dropped. He looked down at his hands in his lap and they stopped their wringing instantly, as though Gustav had only just noticed he was doing it and decided to stop. 

“You don’t need to thank me.”

“But I do,” Cecile insisted. “God only knows how long I would have slept on for if your kiss hadn’t woken me up.”

Gustav’s head jerked up at that. “My – my kiss?” 

“Yes.” Cecile nodded, cheeks burning. “I’m not sure I like the idea of being kissed by all sorts of people, but yours woke me up finally. What else happened wasn’t your fault. The midwife said magic does strange things. That the – the baby is a blessing and I suppose it must be. Every new life is a blessing, that’s what they say….what they used to say, I mean. Do people still say that?”

“Yes,” Gustav replied. His eyes were big and shining, and he looked somewhat pale. He cleared his throat, nodding. “Yes, that’s – people still say that.”

“I’m not ready to see the baby yet,” Cecile said, repeating what she told the midwife. “I don’t mean to be a – a bad mother, but I just...I need some time. You won’t think badly of me for it, will you? Promise me you won’t.”

Gustav’s eyes went even wider. He looked rather shocked, but to Cecile’s relief, he nodded. 

“No, I – I understand. There are nurses looking after him, anyway – good nurses. The best my father could get. He’s being cared for. He – he doesn’t have a name yet, though. My father thought it might be good to name him after your father if – if you’d like that?”

Cecile hesitated, unsure. She couldn’t imagine the baby or think of it – or, rather, him – as actually being hers, but she knew that he was hers and that she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t forever.

She’d always imagined giving a son of hers her father’s name. She just hadn’t imagined having a son in quite this way, quite this soon. She’d also imagined her father would be there for her to tell him, but – her heart panging at the knowledge – Cecile knew that after a hundred years of sleep, her father and no one else she knew would be there for her at all, save for in her memories.

Better that he could live on in some way, even if only in a namesake.

“That’s alright, I think,” she finally said. She took a deep breath and released it in a slow exhale that did a little to calm her. “Yes, I think I would like that very much.”

“Oh, good. That’s – that’s good. I’ll let the nurses know he’s to be called Heinrich, then.”

They both fell quiet after that – Gustav watching Cecile shyly from his chair and Cecile watching him uncertainly back.

Cecile broke the quiet, a question occurring to her which she asked, “Will I be meeting your father soon, then? I’m in no state for visitors, really, but I should like to thank him for his hospitality.”

Gustav’s mouth twisted at the question and he looked away from Cecile, shifting in his seat.

“No. My father doesn’t live at Briarland Castle. He was only visiting when – when you woke up. He only stops at Briarland twice a year as it’s the midpoint between Roseshire and Hipswitch and he went on his way back to Roseshire after making sure things were settled with you, so I don’t expect he’ll be back any time soon. Not until next year, probably.”

Cecile was surprised. 

“You don’t mean that you live here alone, do you? I know it’s been a hundred years, but – but there were so many people here before!”

“Not alone,” Gustav said, looking up. “There’s the staff, of course, and the knights and people who live in the township outside the castle, but my father and brothers don’t live here. My father and oldest brother are at Roseshire in the east, which is the capital now and much larger than Briarland, and my second and third oldest brothers have their own places with their wives elsewhere in the kingdom.”

“You don’t mind it?” Cecile asked, privately hoping she wasn’t prying and that Gustav wouldn’t think that she was being too curious for her own good.

If Gustav thought such a thing, it didn’t show. 

“Mind it?” He blinked as though the question surprised him and shook his head. “No, no, not at all. Briarland Castle has the largest library in the kingdom and there’s – there’s so much  _ history _ here, and because I’m the youngest of my father’s sons, there’s much less pressure on me. It was my idea to come here in the first place and...and well, my father was happy not to have me underfoot, I think. He agreed easily enough.”

Though Gustav sounded happy enough about it all, Cecile felt a pang in her chest about it. She couldn’t imagine her father easily agreeing to have her living away from him, and she found it sad that any man might be happy to be rid of his son.

“But isn’t it lonely?” she had to ask.

“I have my books,” Gustav answered with a shrug, as though that said enough. He hesitated and then shyly, he added, “But now I have you and – and little Heinrich, I suppose, so I won’t want for company. My father signed the land over to me as a wedding gift, so it is ours officially, and I’m quite happy about it. Truthfully, I don’t...I don’t really get along with my father very well. My brothers are alright, but my father...he isn’t very happy with me. He’s never been happy with me, really, but now…he wasn’t very happy with me when he left at all.”

Cecile frowned. Cautiously she asked, “Why would your father be unhappy with you?”

Gustav fairly froze at the question, going as still as a startled deer at it. He swallowed hard – Cecile could hear his gulp and see the knob on his throat bob down then up. 

“He just –” Gustav struggled to answer, his face going ruddy as he tried. “He just, he – he wasn’t happy about Heinrich. Or you.”

“ _ Me _ ?” Cecile repeated, concern shooting through her at the thought of having a king displeased with her. “What--”

“Well, not you,” Gustav rushed to explain. “He isn’t – he isn’t angry  _ with _ you, my father doesn’t believe in being angry with women. He’s just – he’s angry because he thinks I took... _ liberties _ with you. He’s angry with me about it, not you.”

Cecile stared at him, her mind working to process it. 

“He’s angry about you kissing me awake?” she asked.

Gustav frowned deeply and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He looked down at his hands as though thinking very deeply about something and then finally said, “Yes. Yes, that’s...that’s why he’s angry.”

“But you broke the curse!” Cecile protested. “Surely he must understand that and know that I’m grateful for it, even if the magic had...unintended side effects. The midwife said a great many other people kissed me, too, to try to wake me over the years. I don’t much like the thought of that myself, but – but if you woke me, then I cannot hold it against you and neither should he.”

“My father has a very strong set of principles when it comes to the treatment of ladies,” Gustav said, still not meeting Cecile’s eyes, “and what I did to you while you were asleep broke those principles. That you finally awakened because of it...in his eyes that doesn’t make it alright.”

“But--”

“There is nothing that can be done about it now, princess,” Gustav interrupted – gently, but with a sort of firmness in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “My father is no longer here and...and I’m sure that his anger will dwindle with distance. By the time he next visits Briarland again and can meet you and see you’re doing well in my care, he might have gotten over it entirely.”

Cecile’s mouth shut, any further protests drying up on her tongue. 

She didn’t like the idea of someone – anyone, really, but especially a king – being angry because of her, even if that anger wasn’t directed specifically at her. It made her feel guilty, oddly enough, for all that she knew that she’d done nothing to feel guilty for. 

If anyone deserved to have anger directed at them, Cecile thought with a sense of spite that was foreign to her and surprised her with its strength, it was the Wise Woman who cursed her in the first place. Cecile never would have been in the position she was in and never would have had to experience the pain she did if that woman had never done such a vindictive, vile thing to her when she was only a child.

Cecile didn’t deserve to bare the punishments of the thirteenth Wise Woman’s crime. Neither, for that matter, did Gustav who had done nothing wrong so far as Cecile knew.

She said none of this, however, as Gustav clearly didn’t want to discuss the subject much further and Cecile knew it wouldn’t be proper to challenge him.

Instead, she said, “I’m sure you’re right. Your father won’t be able to stay angry with you.” 

Gustav wet his lips and looked at Cecile a little pathetically. 

“Do you think so?” he asked, like he wasn’t really sure himself even though he’d been the one to suggest it first.

“Of course,” reassured Cecile. She couldn’t help but smile at him, hoping to make him feel better for he looked like such a sad thing just then. She felt a small rush of relief when he smiled a little back. “The next time he visits, he’ll probably be in a much better mood. This whole thing has been a shock for me and I suppose it was a shock for him, as well...and for you, of course.”

“Yes,” Gustav admitted. The smile on his face turned into a small frown and he said in a near whisper, as though confessing a secret, “I – I never expected you to...to become with child.”

Cecile blinked at him and then gave a small laugh of surprise. “Why would you have expected it? All you did was kiss me, you couldn’t have known that the magic would do such a thing as a result of it.”

Gustav’s frown deepened and his brows furrowed, his expression looking like he was thinking hard again, but that expression smoothed away quickly. He shook his head and gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “You’re right, of course – why would I have? It was just...just a shock, like you said. I’m still caught off guard, I think. Truth be told, I never really expected to be married or – or anything, really. I always found talking to girls too difficult.”

“You’re talking to me now,” Cecile pointed out and, blushing, added, “and you did kiss me to wake me up. You can’t be that shy, can you?”

Gustav flushed. He looked pointedly away from Cecile as though he couldn’t manage to keep looking at her or else he’d spontaneously combust.

“That was different,” Gustav said. His fingers began tapping out a rhythm on his legs as he spoke – jerky, anxious movements that Cecile couldn’t look at for long because they made her feel quite anxious to see them herself. “When you were asleep, it was...it was different. A sleeping girl is different from an awake one. You don’t worry that she’ll judge you or not like you or want to get away from you. It’s...it’s only about what  _ you _ feel. All the pressure is gone. It’s...easier. To kiss her or to – to –“

Gustav broke off, biting down on his bottom lip as if to physically halt whatever he might say with his teeth.

Cecile’s heart ached for him then. It ached with pity, pity that Gustav was so shy and so withdrawn, so full of worries that he felt more comfortable with a girl asleep than he ever did with one who was awake.

“But I’m not sleeping anymore,” she told him, “and you don’t seem to be worried now.”

Gustav gave a little laugh at that, barely more than a huff with just enough sound to it to not qualify as a sigh.

“I’m very worried,” Gustav confessed, with an odd little self-conscious twitch playing about his mouth. “I’m worried about...about a great many things, but it’s not like you’re some random lady at a ball. We’re already married and a wife is supposed to accept her husband and – and love him no matter what. A girl can walk away from a man she isn’t married to, but a wife can’t walk away from a man she is. There’s...there’s less pressure now, too, though I am still quite nervous. I’m just not... _ as _ nervous as I could be, which is alright enough, I think..”

“I’m glad, then, that you’re alright,” Cecile responded, her voice rather thick from the undefinable emotion swelling in her chest. She swallowed hard, trying to push the emotion back and went on tentatively once she was sure she had, “Though I hope that some day you won’t be nervous around me at all, not even a little. I...know that this isn’t ever how I thought I’d be married, either, but now that I am – that  _ we _ are, I mean, I want you to know that I will take it seriously. My father wanted me married to the person who woke me and that is enough for me, especially now that he’s...gone. I’m not quite sure I know everything I should about how to be a proper wife, but I promise that I’ll try, and if there’s anything I don’t know, then I hope that you will be willing to teach me and correct me if I err in any way.”

Gustav inhaled sharply, the tapping fingers in his lap stuttering in their beat. 

With what looked like a great effort, he raised his head to look at Cecile and quietly he said, “I don’t know if I’m the right person to teach you anything. I don’t think that I know anything more about what a – a proper wife should be like than you would. I might know less, if anything.”

“But you’re the only person to teach me,” Cecile gently argued. “A proper wife’s job is to do what her husband requires of her so that he might be happy with her. You only have to tell me what makes you happy and I will endeavor to keep you that way. You’re my...my husband now, so you’re the only one who can tell me that.”

“Oh,” Gustav replied in a hushed tone. His brows furrowed down consideringly and he looked quite overcome, but finally he wet his lips and offered a little awkwardly, “I’m not very hard to make happy, I don’t think.” 

Cecile smiled despite herself. “I’ll do my best, regardless, then, but...you have to help me, too. If there’s anything you want or need of me, you mustn’t be too nervous to tell me.”

“I’ll – I’ll try,” Gustav said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat with his face reddening again, “but there’s really not much that I’ll need. Truly.”

“Still...“

“I’ll try,” Gustav repeated – and with a bit more confidence this time, too. “If there’s anything I – I need or want of you, I’ll try to ask for it. I promise.”

Cecile would have preferred a more definitive answer than that, but she supposed she couldn’t ask for more than what Gustav had given. He was such a shy, timid man, this husband of hers – more of a boy than a man yet, really. To expect a strong answer on anything was probably too much to ask.

Cecile was at somewhat of a loss at it, at having to be the more forward one between them. It wasn’t how she’d been taught a marriage would be. Her parents and tutors all had told her that it was the man she married who would be the one who was strong and who led while it was her duty to yield to him and follow his lead. 

Gustav wasn’t a leader, however. 

Perhaps it was because he was the youngest of several sons and had never had much cause to learn how to lead or it was just how he was, but it was clear to Cecile that she couldn’t expect Gustav to give her much direction on his own. He would surely keep his promise to try, but she would likely have to coax him into being more open with her and intuit what it was he wanted of her in the meantime. 

It wasn’t how Cecile had been taught, no, but it wasn’t a prospect that repulsed her. Gustav was no Prince Charming out of the story books Cecile liked to read, but he was kind and easy to talk to and Cecile found herself actually somewhat looking forward to drawing him out of his shell.

She didn’t think it was impossible that she might come to love Gustav in the process of it, either.

Or, at least, someday. 

Hopefully. 

Maybe.

*

True to the midwife’s prognosis, Cecile wasn’t bedridden for long after that.

There was only so much time one could spend in bed, only getting up to relieve themselves or stretch their legs for a few minutes at a time under their maids’ watchful gazes, before they started to feel akin to a prisoner, after all, and while Cecile was still sore a few weeks later, her aches had lessened greatly. She found she could be on her feet and walking around for a longer length of time before feeling the need to sit back down than she could that first day after waking up.

As soon as Cecile could do so – and the midwife agreed it was alright – she had her new maids draw her a hot bath and washed herself for what felt like the first time in years, wrinkling her nose in disgust when she realized that it actually  _ was _ . 

The maids brought her a bright canary yellow gown to change into after she was done and looked quite pleased when she fawned over how lovely it was, informing her in happy tones that it was a gift from Prince Gustav and giggling when they told her that he’d sent for gowns in every possible color and style for her as he was at a loss as to what she might like.

Cecile was touched by the gift, but only a short while into being married she had already begun getting used to Gustav’s shy, almost half-hazard sort of sweetness. 

All the while that she was stuck in bed, Gustav would come to see her every day, staying for hours every time. He was always reserved, but Cecile could tell that he was genuinely trying to be less so. They would spend that time speaking, mostly, Gustav usually more timidly than Cecile but still he did speak to her quite often despite his shyness. 

He told her of what his life had been like being raised in Roseshire and how he’d fallen in love with Briarland Castle after his family had first visited it when he was a little boy, a summer visit that occurred soon after his mother had died from a fever, and how he was heartbroken at having to leave at the end of summer to return to motherless Roseshire with his father and brothers.

He spoke, too, of how he managed (without much effort, it seemed to Cecile) to convince his father to let him live here permanently just a few years ago. 

He was interested in the history of Briarland, he told Cecile, which was really how his family’s history as royalty had begun. His voice was always more animated when he talked about this subject than anything else, his eyes going bright and his voice fast, and though Cecile had never cared much for the subject of history herself, Gustav’s excitement was contagious and she couldn’t help but listen to him and want to hear more which he gladly gave to her.

Gustav told her that he’d always known the story of Sleeping Beauty, that everyone in the kingdom did and that most children were raised hearing it – a fact that made Cecile feel incredibly self-conscious, a thing she wasn’t very used to feeling. 

He said that he’d known she still lied somewhere in the castle but that the castle itself was so large and so many new wings and floors and towers had been built on to it over the years that it had taken him some months to actually find the room she was kept in, that he was starting to wonder if perhaps the story of Sleeping Beauty was only a myth after all by the time he finally found her.

His voice lost some of its momentum when he talked to her about that, getting shy again and more awkward, his hands fidgeting in his lap as Cecile realized they were want to do when he was nervous. 

He described how he’d found her in a dusty room in a tower that hadn’t been used in many years and how the only thing in the room that wasn’t covered in grime was a glass coffin that sat in the very center of the floor, the thing looking inexplicably like it was cleaned and shined daily though Gustav knew it couldn’t have been for his footprints were the only ones that had disturbed the layers of dust that covered the tower’s stairs. 

He’d taken the lid off the coffin – a hard task, he told her, as it was quite heavy – and there inside was Cecile, not so much as a speck of dust on her as she lied back in the coffin in a simple white dress with her hands folded over top a bouquet of flowers that were pressed to her chest. 

The flowers were long dried, Gustav said, as though whatever magic kept Cecile so preserved didn’t extend to them, but Cecile was alive and didn’t look as though she’d aged a day much less a century. 

Gustav could see her chest rising and falling, could feel the light breaths escaping her nose when he put his hand in front of it to check, could see the healthy flush in her cheeks. Sometimes her eyes fluttered as though she was dreaming, but Cecile told him that if she had dreamed, she could remember none of it.

She looked like she was sleeping deeply, but naturally, and yet when Gustav tried to wake her – shaking her lightly, speaking to her – she didn’t respond at all.

Cecile asked him if that was when he’d kissed her and she woke up at last, but Gustav went red and pursed his lips before he shook his head in the negative.

“I didn’t...I didn’t  _ kiss _ you for – for, uh, quite awhile,” Gustav told her, every word sounding as though it was being pulled out of him as a barber might pull out a blackened tooth. 

Gustav told her it was months after he first found her before she woke up – nearly a year, he said – but that he visited her every day. He cleaned the dust from the room and the stairs of the tower. He brought up a chair and some books. He read to her, held her hand, and often just watched her sleep.

He told her this with a face as ruddy as a rose in bloom, stuttering and embarrassed. He changed the subject soon enough as though he couldn’t bare to talk about it any longer, and Cecile let him for it clearly caused him some discomfort, and she supposed she could understand why. 

Gustav was afraid she might judge him, Cecile thought, think him unmanly for doing something like reading to a sleeping girl or holding her hand. 

Cecile, however, thought nothing of the sort. 

If anything, she found it incredibly sweet that he would sit with her while she slept and would pay attention to her. She was grateful for it, even, as the thought of laying in a coffin for a hundred years with no company quite distressed her. Just thinking of layers and layers of dust gathering around her while she slept on made her skin crawl and made her want to get into a tub and scrub herself red. 

When Gustav’s timidness overcame him, Cecile would take up the conversation.

Just as Gustav told her about his childhood, so to did Cecile tell him about hers. She told him about her mother and father, about the people who had lived in Briarland Castle and how she liked to explore it whenever she could, and about Briarland itself. 

Cecile worried that all of it might be a little boring, but Gustav seemed quite interested in all of it and perhaps interested in the boring details most of all. 

“There’s so much history that isn’t in the history books, you know?” he told her excitedly one day. “People write about kings and great battles, but never about their queens or the common people and how they all felt or about the simple, unimportant every day details of life.”

“It’s hard to think about one’s life as being historic,” Cecile replied, unsure of how she was meant to feel about it. “Do the unimportant things really matter?”

“Oh!” Gustav exclaimed, nodding rapidly. “Of course they do! But no one ever thinks so at the time and so they never get written down. Then a hundred years go by and historians looking back at it all haven’t a clue about the very things that everyone back then just knew about. It’s absolutely maddening!”

Cecile didn’t quite understand his interest, but she found it rather charming nonetheless. Truthfully, she rather liked the attention Gustav paid to her answers when she spoke and how he really, truly listened to them. When he asked her if he might write some of it down, Cecile agreed easily – it made her feel important, somehow, being this window into the past that Gustav so eagerly looked through. 

She was quite quickly becoming content in Gustav’s presence, as well. 

She woke up every day looking forward to seeing him again and when he left her, she always felt bereft, disappointed that she couldn’t follow him back to the library he spoke so wistfully of or – and this she thought with a blush – to his bedroom where they might go to bed together and continue talking until they fell asleep.

She didn’t know if it was what falling in love felt like, but Cecile thought she and Gustav were at least becoming friends and that counted for quite a bit.

When the midwife finally gave Cecile permission to quit her bed rest, she was a little concerned that things might be different between she and Gustav now that she was no longer confined to a sickroom, that he might not be comfortable continuing their interactions outside of its confines, but if anything they spent even more time together than before.

Gustav personally led Cecile out of her sickroom, demurely complimenting her on how she looked in her bright yellow dress and flushing when she effusively thanked him for it. He offered Cecile his arm after a moment of hesitation and when Cecile smiled happily at him and took it, he gave Cecile a tour of the main parts of Briarland Castle where he and the rest of the castle staff lived. 

Cecile liked the tour, really, but she still felt out of sorts and nearly dizzy at seeing it all. 

The Briarland Castle that Gustav took her through was the same castle Cecile was born and raised in, and yet at the same time it wasn’t. 

The dimensions of it were the same and it wasn’t horribly different, but in many places – places that Cecile  _ knew _ she had been before, halls that she had run down with her mother or rooms that she had hidden from her tutors in – things were different from how they should have been. 

A painting that Cecile had walked by every day would be gone, replaced by new art, or there would be tapestries hanged where once there was blank wall. Some walls that used to be white were now painted blue and some blue walls were now green. There would be furniture she didn’t recognize in some rooms and other rooms would hold the same furniture she remembered but had totally different colored walls or strange rugs laid out on the floors. There were doors in places she didn’t remember doors being and when Gustav opened them and Cecile peeked her head in, she would see that they led to rooms or stairs or hallways she didn’t recognize at all.

It was all odd things like that, things that made Cecile feel like she’d left home to have a picnic and come back to find that someone had snuck in and moved everything two inches to the right just to confuse her while she was gone. It was like everything was  _ close _ to what Cecile remembered, but there was still a film of  _ not quite right _ over everything that had her feeling strange.

Cecile thought it might have been easier if everything was changed entirely, but as it was, the castle made her feel a little topsy-turvy and she found herself constantly blinking at what she thought was a familiar sight only to look twice and see what had been changed. It was a disconcerting feeling, and not a very pleasant one, but Cecile kept it to herself, only asking the occasional question to Gustav about this thing or that as she didn’t want to burden him with her confusion and damper his growing confidence as he showed her around.

Besides, it wasn’t all bad. 

Cecile may have been disconcerted at the changes to Briarland Castle, but she was also curious about them, and Gustav seemed to know everything about the castle there was to know. 

When Cecile asked about a painting she didn’t recognize, Gustav could tell her exactly who had painted it, who had commissioned it, who the person in the painting was, and offered a myriad of details about all of it that Cecile could hardly remember but still found herself hungry to hear more of.

When Cecile made a comment about how this room’s furniture was different than she remembered, Gustav could tell her which of his ancestors had brought it in and what they had used the room for. When she remarked that she didn’t recognize a hallway, Gustav knew when the wing had been built on to the castle and could usually tell Cecile where it led.

It was the library that really animated Gustav, however, a large room filled with shelves of books from ceiling to floor that remained mostly unchanged from what Cecile remembered except that it looked larger than what she remembered. When she voiced this thought to Gustav, he told her that it  _ was _ larger.

“Years ago my grandfather had the wall over there knocked down and built a large wing on to it,” Gustav told her, then rushed to add, as though reassuring her, “but he made sure to take all the books away before he did. He put them back when the new wing was done and the shelves were up, along with a lot more. There are a lot of books here that weren’t a hundred years ago.”

“I used to come here to get story books,” Cecile confessed, “but I always brought them back to my room to read. I don’t think I ever used any of the tables here.”

Gustav blinked at her, like Cecile had surprised him, but then a small smile formed on his face and he said, “All the story books are on the same shelves now, and then there are history books, too – and those are like story books, in a way. History is full of stories just as interesting as the fiction people have come up with – more interesting, really.”

And then Gustav showed her the shelves and watched with happy approval as she pursued them, telling her it was alright to take a few with her. 

They left the library after and Gustav took her down a wing close by that only had a few doors down it. They went into one of these rooms – a large one done up in soft golds and whites with plenty of windows, a big canopied bed, a wardrobe and some drawers, a writing desk and chair, and a sitting area in front of a fireplace – and Gustav told her that it was to be Cecile’s room if she was alright with that. 

“I didn’t think you’d want to stay in the sickroom,” he said, rubbing his hand at the back of his head nervously.

“I didn’t,” Cecile reassured him. “Thank you. This room is much lovelier than that one, as well.”

Gustav looked more relieved than reassured. Bashfully he told her, “My – my room is this one right next to this. That door –“ and at this Gustav pointed to a door in one of the room’s walls “connects to my room so...so if you ever need me or – or you want to – to see me, you can just...”

Gustav trailed off, blushing. 

Cecile smiled softly and told Gustav with feeling, “I think I’ll feel much happier to have you closer to me.”

Gustav’s blush worsened, and he stammered out a suggestion that they continue the tour.

When they left what was now to be Cecile’s room, Cecile pointed to the two doors on the other wall and asked Gustav, “What rooms are those?”

“That’s Heinrich’s room,” Gustav said, “and the other one is his nurse’s room.”

Cecile felt herself freezing, something inside of her going quite still at the reminder of Heinrich who – she realized with some guilt – she had hardly thought about at all in the last week.

“Oh,” Cecile said. She swallowed hard, her belly going sour as she remembered the pain of childbirth and her throat going tight the way it always did when she remembered that she had given birth at all, and despite the fact that Cecile felt as though her very blood was shaking in her veins, asked Gustav, “Might...Might we go see him?”

If Gustav was surprised at this, he didn’t show it. 

“Of course we can,” Gustav said and then headed across the hall without hesitating, opening one of the doors and heading in while Cecile followed with trepidation behind.

The room they entered looked much like Cecile’s room – there were many windows and a sitting area in front of a fireplace and a wardrobe and set of drawers, but rather than a bed there was a crib and the writing desk here was much smaller than the one in Cecile’s room, the thing scaled down for the use of someone much smaller than adult size.

A large woman perhaps fifteen or more years older than Cecile was in the room, standing now in the sitting area with a look on her face as though she’d been startled into standing and with a book held down at one side. 

Cecile intuited quickly that she’d been sitting there reading when Gustav had come in and that she’d risen quickly at seeing him, and she felt a pang of guilt at having burst in on the woman without warning.

“Lady Wanda,” Gustav greeted her, “you haven’t met the Princess Cecile yet, have you?”

The woman – Lady Wanda – shook her head. Smiling, she came out of the sitting area to greet them. She curtsied to Cecile and said, “I haven’t had the pleasure yet. Oh, but you are a beautiful girl! I can see where little Heinrich gets his looks from.”

Cecile could feel her cheeks heating and didn’t quite know why. 

“Thank you. I – I thought I might see him,” Cecile said, biting her tongue so she didn’t add on “if that’s alright”. 

Of course it was alright, wasn’t it? Heinrich was her...he was  _ hers _ .

But still, Cecile felt quite like she was intruding, like she had walked into some other woman’s home and demanded to see that woman’s child, not like she was just coming to see her own. She knew it was wrong of her to feel that way and she feared that Wanda – and Gustav, too – might judge her if they knew.

Wanda only perked up, though, and her smile widened. 

“Oh, of course!” Wanda said, all happiness. She walked over to the crib, apparently expecting Cecile to follow, and after a pause, Cecile did. “You poor thing, I remember what it was like when I had my first. I was younger than you with hips as slim as boy’s and I was laid up in bed for nigh on half a year after. By the time I finally held Leon – that’s my oldest, Leon – he was as heavy as a bag of bricks and I hardly recognized him as my own.”

“Is that – is that normal?” Cecile asked in a hushed voice as they came to a stop by the crib.

Cecile didn’t realize that she wasn’t expecting to see a baby until she was standing over it. 

She was, she realized with some surprise, expecting to see something else entirely. A monster, perhaps. Some vile creature the color of blood, a mass goopy like tar with a gaping mouth filled with razor sharp teeth in the middle. A mean looking thing to match the mean pain she’d felt pushing it out.

It was only when Cecile saw Heinrich that she felt her surprise and she realized she hadn’t been actually expecting a  _ baby _ at all.

But it was a baby.

A baby swaddled in a blue dress, his eyes closed as he slept on his back. He had wispy golden blonde hair on his head and a pink, rosy blush on his chubby little cheeks. He had a nose that Cecile vaguely recognized as a small version of her own, of her mother’s, and the same rosebud mouth as Gustav but which was no larger than a thumbnail.

Cecile found herself wanting him to open his eyes so she might see their color – blue like her own or brown like Gustav’s? – and then found herself disappointed when his eyes remained closed as he continued to sleep.

She found herself feeling relieved, too. So relieved that she wanted to cry from the force of it. 

Heinrich was a baby after all. 

It seemed like a given now that he was a baby, because of course he was a baby, but somehow it was a realization to Cecile – a surprise, and a happy one at that.

“Normal for birth to be a trial?” Lady Wanda was asking.

“No,” Cecile replied distractedly, her eyes still on Heinrich, on his tiny fists resting at his sides, “to not recognize your baby.”

“Ah,” Wanda sounded, then tsked which drew Cecile’s eyes at last away from Heinrich and back to her. Wanda didn’t looked surprised at the question or like she was judging Cecile at all, she just looked rather knowing. She said, “The most normal thing in the world, I’d say. Childbirth doesn’t always just hurt a woman’s body, but her mind as well, and the more a girl she is, the worse the hurt.”

“Truly?” Cecile asked, though she was already beginning to feel more relief sliding down her back like a cool drop of water, that was how reassuring she found Wanda’s words – to know that what she felt was not so strange.

“My own sister had her first when she was even younger than I was when I had mine,” Wanda confided, shaking her head. “Took her two  _ years  _ before she could get out of bed for more than an hour at a time and she never walked right again. When she finally saw Jocinda, my niece, she took one look at the girl and denied she was hers. Swore she hadn’t given birth to her, didn’t know her, that she was some changeling child. Broke poor Jocinda’s heart, she did.”

“That’s horrible!” Cecile cried out, a pang of painful guilt shooting through her that she might have done that to Heinrich. 

“Hmm.” Wanda nodded in agreement. “Horrible, yes, but most women feel something like it when they give birth. You see the child for the first time and there’s always this little voice talking to you in your chest, telling you it isn’t yours, that such a thing couldn’t’ve come out of you, but most women get over it. You learn that your child is yours and you learn to love them and you forget you ever felt different. Some women, though, they never get over it. My sister never did. Never felt that bond for her daughter the way you’re supposed to, but I think she’s lucky in a way to not even see Jocinda as hers. Plenty of women know their child is theirs but they don’t feel it and they feel like the worst sort of person for it, but you can’t force that sort of thing. You can pretend, but you always know it’s pretend, no matter how good you are at it.”

Throat tight, Cecile turned to look back down to Heinrich, blinking back the sudden wetness in her eyes and glad when no tears fell. 

Now that she saw him, Cecile couldn’t deny that Heinrich was hers. He looked too much like her – and like Gustav, too, a good blend of them both – to deny it. She felt a swell of feeling in her chest at the thought of this boy feeling hurt because of her, of what he might feel at two years old if she looked at him and denied for all to hear that he wasn’t her child, that he was a changeling. 

Cecile knew then that she would sooner die than do such a thing. It seemed so vile, so evil to cause so much pain to a child. 

Wanda went on, “But I doubt you’ll have such a problem, princess. Women like my sister, they’re not the majority. Most women get over such a feeling as soon as they’re healed from the birthing and can spend some time with their child. Being a mother doesn’t come naturally all at once no matter what people tell you, it’s something you have to learn just like with everything else.”

“I hope very much that I can learn,” Cecile said, more to herself than to Wanda.

“You will,” Gustav’s voice came from behind her, startling Cecile a little as she’d almost forgotten he was in the room. A tentative hand settled on her shoulder, barely there at first, no more than a ghost of a touch, and then it settled a little more firmly. “I – I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful mother.”

Gustav’s words were awkwardly given, like he didn’t quite know what to say but he knew he needed to say something, and yet Cecile felt more reassured by them than she did by anything Wanda said.

The gentle pressure of Gustav’s hand was lessening, he was about to take it off of her, but Cecile reached back quickly and grabbed it – kept it pressed on her shoulder, refusing to let the comforting weight of it leave her.

She stood there for a long while with Gustav’s hand on her shoulder and her hand on his, looking on at Heinrich in his crib, so lost in her observation of him that she didn’t even notice it when Wanda left. 

When Heinrich opened his eyes awhile later – his  _ brown _ eyes, just like Gustav’s – with a small, toothless yawn, blinking up at Cecile with a hazy curiosity, as though he were asking ‘who is this standing over my crib?’, Cecile felt her heart skip a beat. 

That was what falling in love felt like, she thought. 

That was what it felt like to fall in love in an instant.

*

Cecile’s days settled into something of a pattern after that.

She would start every morning off with a bath – a new habit for her, but the thought of being in that glass coffin and surrounded by dust was so recurring and pervasive that she felt her skin crawl if she didn’t bathe every day. 

She took comfort in knowing that her maids didn’t mind filling her tub or emptying it that much and that they only teased her that Gustav couldn’t go a day without bathing either and that surely that meant they were a perfect match for they were the cleanest people in the kingdom and would think anyone else too filthy for them. 

As Cecile quite liked the clean smell of Gustav’s skin and sometimes found herself holding her breath when walking past knights or servants she passed in the halls who smelled rather ripe, she had to concede that her maids had a point.

After bathing and dressing, Cecile would either join Gustav for breakfast in his room or he would tentatively knock on the door that adjoined their rooms together and they would eat in hers. They would talk over their meal, usually of whatever they were reading or something from their childhoods or about the day to day going ons of the castle, and when they were done, they would spend most of the day together, too.

They explored Briarland Castle together often, Gustav carrying a blank notebook and quills that he was using to actually map the castle out and Cecile carrying a basket of food and wine so that they wouldn’t have to hurry back to the occupied parts of the castle if they got hungry or thirsty. They spent a lot of time in the library together, too, either reading separate books – Gustav his history and Cecile her fiction – or with Gustav reading aloud to Cecile, which she enjoyed even when she found the content of what Gustav read rather dull for it was nice to hear his voice free of stammers or uncertainty. 

And sometimes they left the castle entirely, exploring the orchards that surrounded it or having picnics on a blanket they spread on the ground. 

Cecile had taken to spending plenty of time with Heinrich, as well, determined that she would know him and he would know her, and as she spent most of her time with Gustav, that meant it was often the three of them together like a family. 

Heinrich was a good baby – quiet and sweet – and so it was never a hardship to have him near, not even in the library while she and Gustav read. Cecile felt her affection for the little boy growing by the day and her affection for Gustav growing, too, for he was quite sweet with Heinrich himself and also quite sweet with her.

Gustav was still shy, still awkward – and almost painfully so sometimes – but he was getting used to Cecile, she could tell it. He could look her in the eye for longer without having to jerk his gaze away and he spoke more confidently.

He touched her now, too.

Small touches, really. Some of them barely touches at all. 

He would sit close to her, their sides pressed flush together, in the library or at meals. Sometimes he would touch her hand or her arm or her knee without thinking about it, always jerking his hand away as though burned and flushing hotly when he realized what he’d done. 

Once he’d even gone so far as to reach his hand out to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. 

Cecile shivered from the feeling of his fingers brushing against her earlobe even as Gustav looked horribly embarrassed about touching her in such a way, like he wanted to dig a hole in the ground right then and there and just crawl right into it. He never repeated the gesture again, though Cecile wouldn’t have been displeased if he did.

Cecile found herself looking at Gustav’s hands all the time now, in fact, thinking not just of those small touches he gave her only accidentally but also wondering what it might be like for him to touch her more than just fleetingly, to touch her on purpose. She wondered what it would feel like for him to wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her against him or to run his fingers through her hair, to take her hand in his and hold it like he didn’t want to let it go.

She looked at his mouth often, too, now, his rosebud lips that she’d thought from the start would be better suited as a girl’s mouth than a man’s but which she now thought about pressing to her own lips, wondering what it might be like for him to kiss her and for her to remember it.

Sometimes at night when Cecile was alone she would trace her lips with her fingertips and try to remember the kiss Gustav used to wake her up, but she never could. She always felt bereft for not remembering their first kiss, curious when she wondered if it had been Gustav’s first kiss altogether, and then squirmy and disgusted when she remembered that it wasn’t actually  _ her _ first kiss at all – that a hundred, maybe a thousand others had kissed her while she slept before Gustav had. 

A thousand people who might have looked like anything, who might’ve had bad breath or missing teeth, who Cecile would not have willingly kissed in a thousand years much less a hundred. A thousand men, boys,  _ women _ even if the midwife was to be believed.

Cecile thought that perhaps she was being horribly unfair for being bothered by it when her own father had allowed it and it was all for the purpose of waking her up, but she also thought it  _ was _ fair if she refused to count any of those kisses that she couldn’t remember as her first. 

When she and Gustav kissed for the first time – though really for the second time – Cecile would count that as her first. A woman’s first kiss  _ should _ be with her husband, Cecile thought. If she couldn’t remember any of the others then they may as well not have happened as far as she was concerned.

The problem was that Cecile wasn’t sure when that kiss would ever happen.

Gustav might have been becoming more open to her, but he was still terribly reserved. He treated just touching Cecile on the hand as the deepest of intimacies even after weeks of knowing one another and spending most of their time together, and so it was difficult for Cecile to picture him going so much farther and actually kissing her. 

A kiss on the cheek seemed beyond Gustav’s capability at this point. A kiss on the mouth was unthinkable.

Cecile would understand his reticence more if they were unmarried – it would only be proper then for him to hold back from being too tactile with her – but as she and Gustav were wife and husband already, there was nothing wrong with him doing more than just touching her chastely on the hand and immediately pulling away.

Cecile found herself wanting him to do more and frustrated when he didn’t, during those disappointing times when their heads were close together and it would have been so easy for Gustav to kiss her or when his hand rested inches away from hers and it would take little for him to move it over and hold her hand the way he had when she was giving birth, though perhaps less tightly as he had done then. 

She wondered if there was something wrong with her for that, for wanting more, if it made her wanton like her mother had always told her no good girl should be to want Gustav to touch her. Her mother had always advised her that it wasn’t right for a girl to want a man to touch her in an intimate way outside of marriage and that even within a marriage such things should only be tolerated by a wife in the name of obeying her spouse. 

A wife wasn’t expected to like having her husband touch her or want him to do it more, and yet Cecile did, as little good as it did her since Gustav was entirely too shy to do more than the barest sort of touching on his own. 

Cecile worried that she and Gustav would be elderly by the time he got up the nerve to kiss her if they kept going at the slow snail’s pace they were on, and she found herself more worried about that than she did about any concerns she had about thinking like a wanton woman.

It went against everything Cecile had been taught about womanly virtue and marriage, but she knew that if she wanted more from Gustav than just feather-light touches on her hand then she’d have to be the one to initiate them. It was an intimidating knowledge, that, twisting in her belly and making her pulse pick up in a way that made her feel a great empathy for Gustav if he felt even half as nervous about initiating anything with her himself, but in a way it was also...exciting. 

The nerves Cecile had over it all were more like anticipation than dread and she told herself that was alright, that it didn’t make her bad. Gustav was her husband, not some random boy who was courting her, and so there was nothing wrong with feeling that way about him or acting on those feelings. 

Cecile only hoped Gustav would feel the same.

*

They were picnicking in the orchard that day. 

Heinrich had just gone down for a nap and Cecile had felt a little shut-in at the thought of spending the day indoors when it was so lovely outside. She suggested a picnic to Gustav and Gustav had agreed easily even though Cecile knew there was a certain book he’d been eager to get into. 

Cecile appreciated that greatly and felt warmed by it, that Gustav was willing to prioritize their time together over his reading which she knew he quite loved and had dominated his time before he and Cecile were married. 

There was a smile on her face and a lightness in her spirit as she went to the kitchens to ask them to pack a basket of food for their picnic and then darted into her own room to grab a blanket they could lounge on. When she returned to meet Gustav in the castle’s entrance hall, he was fidgeting nervously where he stood but stilled the instant he saw her, a small smile forming on his face once their eyes met, and this quite pleased Cecile too. 

They left the castle side by side and made their way to the orchard, walking until they came to a stop at a great, towering apple tree some ways in that offered plenty of shade from the sun. By some silent agreement between them, it was on the grass under this tree that Gustav spread the blanket out and there that they sat and it was Cecile who unpacked the food on the blanket without hurry, taking out cold meats and cheese and bread along with a bottle of cider and two glasses to drink it from. 

Gustav observed Cecile do this with a quiet sort of curiosity from where he sat close to her, one of his hands resting on the blanket in the space between them and the other resting lightly on his own knee. Cecile shot occasional glances from under her lashes back at him, something soft and warm unfurling itself in her chest a little more each time she looked up and caught his eye.

Cecile didn’t make the choice to kiss Gustav. Not really. There was no voice in her head that said to kiss him then, no thought process weighing the pros and cons of doing it and of doing it right now, no second guesses or worries creeping up and wrapping around those thoughts of kissing like tangling, brambling vines, ready to nick and poke and scratch her romantic notions with their thorns.

She simply finished unpacking the basket, carefully sitting down the last of the two glasses, and then when she looked up at Gustav, she found her hand going still around the round glass rim along with all the rest of her but her breath and her heartbeat. There was no choice made then, no thought had, no nothing at all in Cecile’s head but a warm blank space for that span of a few heartbeats that she held eye contact with Gustav, a space that seemed to spread out infinitely in all directions around her as she leaned forward until her lips were pressed to his and her eyes were sliding shut on instinct.

The kiss felt like it lasted a lifetime, but in reality lasted perhaps only a few seconds. 

Gustav’s mouth was warm and soft against Cecile’s own, closed and unmoving until Cecile’s tongue darted out and swiped at his lower lip without her deciding to do it, tasting the faint flavor of the honey he always spooned into his tea still lingering there on his skin. Gustav made a startled sound at that, muffled by Cecile’s mouth, and his own mouth opened a little as though he had tried to gasp, causing Cecile’s tongue to slip between Gustav’s lips and go inside.

It was when the tip of Cecile’s tongue pressed against the hard veneer of Gustav’s teeth that the warm blank space in her head suddenly felt like a bucket of ice had been thrown into it and she realized what she was doing. She jerked away from Gustav like she’d been pushed away by physical force, her cheeks burning madly and her eyes snapping open. 

At seeing Gustav’s taken aback expression, all pallid and wide eyed and mouth still wet and parted, Cecile’s blush burned hotter and regret rose up in her belly like bile.

“I’m  _ so _ sorry,” she said, more embarrassed than she thought she’d ever been in her life. Her hand flew up to her mouth, covering it as though that would somehow stifle the fact of what it had just been doing. Cecile shook her head and grimaced behind the cover of her palm. “Oh, Gustav. You must think so poorly of me now, but I swear to you I didn’t know what I was doing! I just – I wasn’t thinking and –“

She broke off and groaned, dropping her hand back to her lap where it wringed in a nervous gesture that was more like something Gustav would do than her. Proof, Cecile thought, of how affected she was by her own folly. 

“Please forgive me,” she begged, hating how meek her voice sounded to her own ears though she knew she hadn’t the strength to try to sound better than she felt.

Something about how she sounded must have reached Gustav, too, for it seemed to snap him out of his stupor. All the blood rushed back into his face at once, his cheeks going very, very red, and his eyes lost some of their wide surprise after he blinked a few times and shook his head, though he still looked a bit stunned.

“I,” Gustav started, then stopped immediately, the words drying up to dust in his mouth in an instant. He swallowed hard, the knob in his throat bobbing as he did, and then cleared his throat for good measure, but he didn’t immediately try to speak again.

He was quiet for such a good, long while after that that it left Cecile stewing in her own dread, her mind growing ideas for how he might respond to her like ugly little mushrooms popping up after a storm. What made it worse was that Gustav’s hands, for once, were not fidgeting where they rested with one still on the blanket and the other on his knee. They were both still even though Gustav was clearly ill at ease, and it was such an odd thing to observe that it made Cecile feel even more nervous herself, like the lack of fidgeting which she hadn’t realized she’d gotten so used to was a horrible portent for bad things to come. 

But nothing bad happened.

When Gustav found his voice, he only said very calmly, “You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

Cecile took a deep breath to steady herself and let it out in a slow, soundless exhale. “You’re being kind, Gustav, but you don’t need to be. I was too forward. I shouldn’t have been, I only...I only wanted to...” She huffed, frustrated with her own stumbling tongue. She finished, much more bluntly than she intended, “I just wanted to kiss you.”

“Well,” Gustav said, the word sounding rather choked as it came out. He cleared his throat again, his face burning a darker pink as the hand resting on his knee quit its stillness to start pulling at a loose thread there. “Well, I didn’t mind and I’m – I’m not just saying that to be  _ kind _ . You only took me by surprise, is all. I didn’t...I didn’t think you’d ever want to kiss me at all, is the thing.”

“What?” Cecile asked, her embarrassment going still in her chest as she was suddenly caught off guard. “Why not? Why on earth wouldn’t I want to kiss you?”

Gustav’s fingers went rough at his knee, jerking nervously in a tapping manner with the loose thread still grasped between them rather than making any real effort to pull the thread free any further than he already had. 

“I’m not really someone a pretty girl would want to kiss,” Gustav said, more matter-of-fact than self-deprecating. “I’ve always known I wasn’t. I’m bookish and I’m not very tall and I don’t have all that interesting of a face, and I’m – I’m  _ fine _ with all of that, I guess. I have other things that make me happy. I just never thought any girl would be interested in me. I did tell you that before, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did. You said it was...easier with me when I was asleep. Do you –“ Cecile stopped herself, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. She felt herself going as still as a rabbit who’d heard a branch crunch under someone’s foot and voicing the thought that startled her did little to make her worry any less. 

Still, though, Cecile felt like she had to ask, “Gustav, do you wish I was still sleeping?”

Cecile was afraid that Gustav might look instantly guilty at the question and her worst fear would be confirmed, but there was no guilt on Gustav’s face that Cecile could discern. Rather, Gustav looked entirely taken aback, the pink in his face leeching out and leaving his skin looking chalky, not as though the question had shamed him but as though it had frightened him for some reason instead. 

Cecile wasn’t sure that reaction was any better than guilt would have been as she found it impossible to feel any relief at seeing it.

“What do you – why would you ask me that?” Gustav asked, his voice tight.

“It’s only that you said before that – that it was  _ easier _ when I was asleep. That it was different and you felt like it was less intimidating to kiss me then. Do you still feel that way? Do you wish I’d never woken up?”

Gustav’s mouth parted, but it was a moment before he actually spoke. In that time he looked down and away from Cecile and shook his head. He looked back up at her and though some of the color came back to his face, he was still paler than the norm. 

“No,” Gustav said slowly, but not without confidence. His every word after came out as though he were trying to find the exact right thing to say, as though he were taking as great a pain in doing so as one would try to find a gold vein running through a mine, but when the words did come, they sounded genuine to Cecile. “I don’t wish you’d never woken up. Of course I don’t wish that. I’ve...enjoyed all the time we’ve spent together, you’ve seen that. I wouldn’t have been able to fake all that even if I wanted to and – and I wouldn’t. Fake it, I mean. You and Heinrich have made me happy in a way I never thought I could be and...and you’re a wonderful wife. You’re beautiful and kind and sweet and, well, you seem to like spending time with me as much I do you for some reason and I don’t think many girls would.”

A smile twitched upwards at the corner of Cecile’s mouth at that and then disappeared just as quickly. 

“But?” she pressed, knowing instinctively that there was a ‘but’ there.

“ _ But _ ,” Gustav continued, frowning, “I guess I still am a...little intimidated. I don’t wish you were still asleep because I’d miss you how you are when you’re awake if you were, but with the – the kissing and things. It’s not your fault, it’s not – not anything you’re doing  _ wrong _ or anything like that. It’s just that when I  _ think _ of kissing you or even just holding your hand, I imagine you  _ looking _ at me and reacting and all that and it’s like my heart just jumps up from my chest and gets caught in my throat and I can’t do anything at all because of it. I really don’t wish you had never woken up, believe me about that, but it’s just...”

He trailed off and so Cecile finished for him, “It was easier when I was asleep.”

“Yes, but – but just the kissing part,” Gustav corrected, the flush coming fully back to his face. Bashfully, he admitted, “I like talking to you more when you can talk back, you know. I – I quite love the sound of your voice when you read and the talks we have and how you sing Heinrich to sleep. It’s the thing I most look forward to every day.”

Cecile’s lips twitched upwards again, but this time the smile didn’t slip away so easily.

“More than your books?” she asked, only half-teasing.

Gustav smiled tentatively back. He raised his hand and curled all but his pointed finger and his thumb into his palm until he was holding those two digits with only about an inch of space between them. 

“Just a – a  _ smidge _ more, really,” Gustav replied, his own tone all teasing.

Cecile giggled despite herself and felt lighter for it. She felt even lighter still for the way Gustav’s smile broadened  _ just _ so at hearing her laugh.

It was all a relief in a way, Cecile supposed. 

She’d kissed Gustav and the world hadn’t ended. It hadn’t gone  _ well _ , exactly, but her husband didn’t think she was a harlot and by all accounts he’d told her almost everything a woman might want to hear from the man she was married to. 

He told her he liked her and that he enjoyed spending time with her. He told her that she made him happy and that he thought she was beautiful. Any wife would be more than satisfied by that alone.

He had trouble kissing her or touching her, yes, but it wasn’t because of anything Cecile had done to repulse or offend him. She was a good wife, he had said so himself and as a good wife, Cecile was obligated to believe what her husband had to say. She had no reason to think he was lying to her and everything she had observed in him only gave credence to his explanation.

Gustav was just...shy, that was all. Cecile had known that from the start. He was a shy, awkward boy just on the cusp of manhood who, from all he’d told Cecile about his childhood, hadn’t any experience being around women much and whose father and brothers hadn’t troubled themselves over teaching him any differently. They hadn’t much troubled themselves on teaching Gustav about how to be forward like a man was supposed to be, either, for that matter. 

It was no surprise that Gustav wasn’t comfortable kissing her while she was awake, then, with all of that considered. Cecile knew she was lucky that he was gradually overcoming that shyness of his so that they could spend their days together, talking and being in each other’s presence, without wishing for anything else, but Cecile  _ did _ wish.

She wished Gustav would kiss her and touch her. She wished that he could be as comfortable with her while she was awake as he was when she was sleeping. She wished that she could keep the Gustav she had grown to care for after waking up and also have the one that only her sleeping self had known, so that she may have all of him instead of only part. She wished for all of that and more.

Cecile had no desire to slip back into her cursed slumber, but if only there were some way that she might sleep so that Gustav could feel comfortable enough to kiss her and yet somehow still be awake and know what was going on, it would be perfect. 

When the idea came to her, Cecile felt as though a small jolt of lightning had run through her.

“What if –“ she started, only to falter suddenly as she realized what she was about to suggest, her face burning.

Gustav tilted his head at her, bird-like and curious. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking that...well, what if I only  _ pretended _ to be asleep? If I did that, then maybe you’d --” She stopped suddenly again at the look on Gustav’s face, the surprise on it. The shock. She gave a small laugh, shaking her head, and even to her ears it sounded awkward and forced. “I’m sorry. It’s a terrible idea. I don’t know why I even thought of it.“

Gustav was quiet for a moment, just staring at her with the same surprised look, but finally –

“You would do that?” he asked, something like awe in his voice. He swallowed audibly a second later, his Adam’s apple bobbing before he added on, clarifying, “For me? You would do that for me?”

“I told you after I first woke up that if you needed anything from me, you could tell me,” she replied earnestly, feeling strangely exposed as she said it. “I want us to be close, Gustav, like husbands and wives are supposed to be. I don’t mind the idea of having to pretend I’m asleep for us to do that, if you need me to, as long as – as you don’t think I’m strange for suggesting it in the first place, of course.”

“I don’t,” Gustav was quick to say. “Of course I don’t. I just –“

He stopped and licked his lips like they were dry, looking at Cecile in a way that made her think she wasn’t the only one who felt exposed then and that reminded her of how he’d looked the second time she saw him. Not the first when she was in so much pain in that horrible little coffin, but after when she’d woken up in the sick room and he’d come in to sit beside her. Gustav had looked as timid them as he did now, as wary and skittish like the slightest sudden sound might frighten him away.

Cecile saw the moment Gustav raised his hand up from the blanket they were sitting on and watched as he tentatively brought it up to her, shaking, to touch the lock of hair tucked behind her ear. Somehow, the touch was still a surprise for all she saw it coming. The bare brush of his fingers against the shell of her ear thrilled her and sent a shiver down her neck that she didn’t think she quite managed to hide.

Gustav lowered his hand back to his lap where his other hand wrapped around it, his fingers going around his wrist as if to stop himself from touching Cecile again. He exhaled, the sound as unsteady as his hand was only moments before.

“I don’t deserve you,” he told Cecile like it was a confession. “I’m a terrible person, I don’t –“

“You’re not,” Cecile was surprised enough to interrupt him. “You’re not a terrible person at all. Why would you even think that?”

“I –“ 

Gustav stopped before he could say anything else and looked away from Cecile then, frowning and shame faced. His fingers were white around his wrist from how hard they were squeezing it and Cecile hated the sight of it and his expression both. She acted before she could think about it, reaching out to take his hand in hers and gently pull it away from where it was squeezing the life out of his other hand. 

Gustav didn’t fight her, and the touch was enough of a surprise that it had his head jerking up and his eyes meeting hers once more.

“You’re not a terrible person, Gustav,” Cecile repeated, as softly as she had spoken to him during that first conversation they had. “You’re a good husband and a good father to Heinrich and you’re kind to everyone else in the castle. You’ve been nothing but good to me since I woke up.”

“But...but  _ before _ that...”

“I don’t care about anything that happened before that,” Cecile rushed to reassure. “Before that I was asleep for a hundred years and I might have stayed that way for a hundred more if it weren’t for you. Why does it matter so long as we’re happy now? We are happy now, aren’t we?”

“...Yes. Yes, of course we’re happy now.  _ You _ make me happy now.”

“And you make me happy, too,” she said, squeezing his hand, “and I’ll be all the more happy if I can do this for you, if you’ll let me.”

For a moment after that, Gustav said nothing.  _ Did _ nothing. He didn’t speak or move and if Cecile couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest, she wouldn’t have thought he breathed. She waited with her own breath held in anticipation, wondering if Gustav might say no after all or if he’d just change the subject and try to pretend the whole conversation never happened. 

Cecile didn’t know what she’d do if he did – accept it, she supposed. Perhaps bring it up again on another day, though she didn’t want to be disrespectful of Gustav’s wishes. Her mother had always told her than men didn’t like their wives to do that, that it was the worst thing any woman could do – to push her husband after he’d already made his feelings on a matter clear.

But Cecile didn’t need to worry about that for, after a short time, Gustav nodded. It was one movement of his head, short and stiff, but it was a nod nonetheless. 

Cecile let out her held breath slowly and smiled at Gustav, relieved when he smiled – albeit rather nervously – back. 

“Would you like to try now?” she asked Gustav, and wondered if the question had been impertinent when Gustav blanched back.

“Now?” he asked, something scandalized in his voice that had Cecile’s face flushing with heat. His eyes were wide as they darted across the orchard around them, as if he were looking for something or someone. “ _ Here _ ? Out—outside?”

“It’s more private here,” Cecile explained, pleased when she didn’t sound too defensive about it. “No one has ever come to the orchard when we’ve been here before and if we go to the castle there will be more people about and – and it’s such a lovely day, isn’t it?”

Gustav’s mouth parted, his eyes still wide and his face as pink as Cecile was sure her own was, but he said nothing and Cecile had to resist the urge to frown.

“Don’t you want to?” she asked him, squeezing his hand again. 

Gustav’s eyes dropped down to their joined hands at the touch as if he were surprised to see them and his blush was even more pronounced when his eyes jerked back up to hers. He licked his lips, his eyes boring into hers like they were searching for something and he must have found it for he nodded quickly, his head bobbing in acquiescence. 

“Alright,” he said, sounding hoarse. He swallowed and shifted nervously where he sat. “How should we –“

Cecile blinked. “Oh...let me just –“ 

She cut off her words, her nerves fluttering like butterflies in her belly and the most absurd urge to giggle rising up in her throat. She bit her lip, thinking, and finally let go of Gustav’s hand before she took a steadying breath and began to lower her body to the ground until her back was flat against it and she could feel the hardness of it under her head, the blanket doing little to soften it.

Cecile felt strangely vulnerable laying there like that, prone, and smoothed her hands nervously over the front of her dress before she let them fold themselves over her belly, her fingers interlaced, for a lack of anything else to do with them.

Gustav’s eyes never left her the entire time. He stared at her, something raw and frightened and curious in his look that only made Cecile feel all the more exposed, suddenly uncertain of what she was doing and whether she was just making a fool of herself.

“I’ll close my eyes,” she told him, forcing herself to sound more confident than she felt, “and I’ll try my best to pretend like I’m asleep.”

Gustav swallowed again, his throat clicking with the motion. 

“And what should I do?” he asked, his voice hushed almost like he was worried someone might overhear them.

“Whatever you’d like,” Cecile replied, horribly aware of the heat on her face that had nothing to do with the sunlight filtering through the leaves above them. “Kiss me or – or touch me, if you want.”

“And you’re...you’re sure you’re alright with that? Truly?”

Cecile was more than alright with it, she thought. She had been thinking of little else for weeks, though she had never imagined Gustav kissing her in quite this way, but she didn’t feel comfortable saying that just now.

Instead she told him, her voice soft but certain, “You’re my husband, Gustav. I’m your wife. You’re allowed to do as you want with me and it’s my duty to please you. I  _ want _ to please you. There’s nothing I’m more sure about than that.”

However sure Cecile was, however, there was still an uncertainty about Gustav’s own expression that her words hadn’t managed to erase. Cecile didn’t know what else she could say to reassure him that she hadn’t already and so she decided to not try saying anything more at all. 

Rather, she turned her face away from Gustav and after taking a slow breath and releasing it, she closed her eyes.

Cecile focused on evening her breathing out, on making it not too fast but not too slow, either, and on keeping her body entirely still. She thought back to her childhood as she did it, back to those mornings where she didn’t want to get up and she’d pretend to be sleeping to fool her maids into letting her rest for five or ten, sometimes even thirty minutes more. She never managed to fool them forever and sometimes she got the impression they were only humoring her and weren’t fooled at all, but Cecile hoped she was doing a good enough job of pretending for Gustav to become comfortable even if he knew it was all an act.

Cecile remembered the press of her mouth on Gustav’s from earlier and she desperately hoped it wouldn’t be the only kiss she and her husband would ever share that she could remember.

It felt like an age before anything happened. Cecile just lied there, still and breathing. Her body was calm due to the slow, even breaths, relaxed and pliant. She could feel the warmth of the day on her face and arms and the exposed skin of her neck and collarbone. She could hear birdsong above her in the trees. 

The only reason she didn’t jump out of her skin when Gustav finally touched her was because she heard him, too – a quiet, shaky breath that Cecile only picked up because she was listening so carefully to the world around her. A rustle of clothes, the sound of a body shifting closer accompanied by the feeling of another person’s presence like a physical sensation entering her personal space, a warmth that went beyond an increased feeling of heat.

Cecile’s instincts made her want to hold her breath, but she forced herself not to. She made herself keep breathing as she had been – slow and easy like she was in the deepest of sleeps – so that when Gustav’s skin touched hers, she was ready for it. She didn’t startle or flinch. She just kept breathing, in and out, in and out, again and again. 

Gustav’s fingers caressed along her temple first and Cecile could tell how nervous he was by how those fingers were shaking, his light touch drawing down the side of her face and then along her ear to tuck a stray hair behind it before it went further down still along her jawline and the underside of her chin where his touch grew bolder suddenly, more certain, as his open palm pressed right against her throat. 

His thumb brushed along the front of it and Cecile swallowed reflexively at the touch. She heard a hitch in Gustav’s breathing after she did, but his hand didn’t leave her. It only drifted downwards towards Cecile’s chest, his warm skin against her collarbone resting there and then going lower so that the heat of his hand was between the swells of her breasts, an illicit feeling touch that had Cecile’s nipples going hard under her dress and something sparking pleasurably between her legs that was entirely new to her.

“You’re so beautiful,” Gustav said in a low, quiet voice filled with a warmth that Cecile didn’t think was meant to be heard. 

It was the only warning Cecile had before Gustav leaned down to kiss her. 

The press of his mouth to hers was warm and soft and when Cecile parted her mouth without thinking about it, Gustav let out a small sound and slipped his tongue inside. He licked at the roof of her mouth, a firm touch that tickled her, and then at her lips, the kiss wet and leaving saliva behind. His mouth left hers then and made its way across her face, pressing wet kisses to her cheek before moving to her neck where Gustav licked and suckled, an odd but not horrible touch, one that had the slightest bit of pain to it when Gustav sucked for too hard, too long, but Cecile found she didn’t mind it, that spark between her legs growing the longer Gustav did it.

And as Gustav’s mouth moved over her, his hands moved, too. His palm moved from between her breasts to hover over one of them, just lightly resting there at first before it cupped her more fully, squeezing the fullness of it, his thumb boldly pressing against Cecile’s covered nipple in a way that had her biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying out. 

Gustav didn’t notice or, at least, if he did it didn’t deter him. His body pressed closer to Cecile, the tall, gangly form of him fully on top of her. Cecile could feel something hard pressing into her hip that Gustav began thrusting against her after awhile, letting out muffled little moans against her neck as he did. His touch grew bolder as his sounds grew louder, his hand that was touching her breast slipping beneath the collar of her dress to fondle it with no barrier between them while his other hand went lower, hastily rucking her dress up over her waist and pushing her legs apart, the actions shocking and desperate. 

Cecile kept her eyes shut the entire time and her breathing as slow and calm as it had been, but it was difficult the more Gustav touched her, the more her body responded to those touches and the less they reminded her of the boy she had gotten to know in the last months. There was nothing nervous about Gustav now, nothing tentative. His touches were fast and needy, as if all the barriers that had kept him from being fully comfortable around Cecile were gone, as if she were not another person or a woman who might intimidate him, but a sleeping doll who he could do as he pleased with and not fear any judgment from.

When Gustav pulled down Cecile’s small clothes, all but tearing them away, a flush of hot embarrassment rushed through Cecile, but she forced it away. She had no right to be scandalized by her own husband touching her this way, she knew. She was his wife and she knew from the talks her mother had had with her about what a wife’s duties were that this was normal, natural. That her body belonged to Gustav and that it was her duty in life – her only duty – to allow him to have his pleasure with her in all ways that he would have her. 

Cecile’s mother had just never told her about how it would feel when her husband would touch her, however, nothing in her advice on how to be a proper wife preparing her for the way it felt to have Gustav’s hand between her legs, his fingers sliding slick between the folds of her most intimate place, how wet it would feel and how Cecile’s insides would throb as though they were empty of something they vitally needed as he played with her.

Her mother had also told her it would hurt the first time a man entered her, but when Cecile heard the sound of Gustav’s belt being unbuckled followed by something blunt and hot pressed between her legs that slowly pushed its way in, there was no pain at all. She only felt stretched strangely, full in a way she’d never been before, the something like a muscle that was being exerted but not nearly so close. Even when Gustav was fully sheathed within her, when he pulled out some and then thrust his length back in, it didn’t hurt at all. 

Cecile only felt warm as Gustav took her, hot from his body over hers and from the warmth of the day and from how hard it was now to keep her breathing even, a sheen of sweat coating her from the exertion of trying. Gustav was moaning loudly as he had her, his breathing fast and gasping and his member hard as it pushed in and out of her in fast thrusts that Cecile’s body clenched around, throbbing with something heavy and deep every time Gustav thrust in. He had one hand still under her dress, squeezing her breast almost too roughly, while his other hand was on her thigh, holding her legs open for him, his short nails digging in to her soft skin.

Cecile felt like Gustav was chasing something as he continued the movements of his member inside of her, as they quickened and his sounds grew desperate, almost like he was in pain. The grip he had on her breast and thigh tightened as his hips began stuttering in their thrusts, as he thrust into her with hard force and then paused before pulling back and doing it again. He did that one then twice and then finally when thrust inside of her one last time, he stilled completely, letting out a guttural noise as Cecile felt something hot and wet spilling inside of her. 

Gustav’s body all but collapsed over Cecile’s then, his member going soft within her even while Cecile still felt herself throbbing around it and his face buried in her neck, his breath hot against it and panting. He stayed like that for a long moment, long enough that Cecile opened her eyes and looked down at him, at the sweaty mop of hair on top of his head. She felt sweaty and filthy herself, wet between her legs, and somehow unsatisfied. Like there was something she had wanted, but hadn’t got, which was silly because she had gotten exactly what she wanted – Gustav kissing her, touching her. She had no right to feel unfulfilled, but some strange part of her did. Cecile just couldn’t figure out what more it was she had needed.

When finally Gustav’s panting breaths slowed down, he slipped his member out of her and Cecile tried not to wrinkle her nose at the feeling of something leaking from her entrance as he did. It was his seed, she knew. Her mother had told her about that, too, about how important it was to make sure her husband’s seed stayed in her so that she would have a child, but Cecile didn’t worry about that now – they already had Heinrich, after all. 

Gustav slowly moved off of her, towards the side, his hand leaving her thigh to tuck himself back in his breeches. He kept his arm around Cecile after and when he finally looked up at her, meeting her eyes, his own eyes were wide and black, his face red from exertion or embarrassment or both. He looked like himself again, though – nervous and bashful. Nothing of how he had acted just moments before when he was buried within her and taking her so desperately evident in his face.

“Thank you,” Gustav said, quiet and reverent. He swallowed and they were close enough that Cecile could feel the movement against his skin, and Gustav looked at her then like he was a man seeing the sun for the first time. “Thank you so much.”

Cecile’s heart thumped in her chest and she smiled at him, warm and happy. 

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said, just as quiet as he had been. 

Gustav didn’t respond right away, but buried his face back into her neck, breaking eye contact. 

Cecile brought a hand up to rest it in his hair and pressed a kiss to the side of his head, her heart thumping again at how Gustav’s body shuddered against her when he felt it. 

“Will you,” he whispered again, so low now that Cecile could barely hear the words. “Will you let me...again?”

Cecile kissed into his hair again and relished in Gustav’s sigh. 

“Of course,” she said, meaning it. “What sort of wife would I be if I didn’t?”


End file.
